Comparative Literature Program - Course Descriptions

Term:  

Spring Quarter

Dept Course No and Title Instructor
COM LIT (S24)9  MEMOIR AS RESISTNCECHAHINIAN, T.
Memoir as Resistance: In Defense of the Fragmented Self
CL 9 / Spring 2024


In a 2011 interview, CEO of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg argued that in the digital age, our negotiations of the self demand a singular identity, claiming that “Having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity” (NYTimes 5/14/11). This class surveys contemporary memoirs and autobiographies to examine how the literary form of self-writing challenges emergent ideas of a unified identity that online personas perpetuate. The class explores how in a multicultural society like the United States, the memoir has gained popularity as a genre that celebrates notions of community, multiple belonging, and hybrid identities. In looking at the genre’s common themes of transgenerational memory, family narratives, and social responsibility, our readings will examine the intersection of power, privilege and bias inherent in the process of representing culture and expressing the self.
COM LIT (S24)60C  CULTURAL STUDIESAMIRAN, E.
CL60C Spring 2024

What does it mean to read mass culture works like television shows, films, and architecture?  Many of these works are only nominally written (or created) by an author; instead, they sites of political contestation about culture and society.  We’ll read public culture, including TV shows (Zatoichi: The Blind Swordsman from Japan, for example, or Star Trek), public demonstration art, newspaper comics, public art installations by Kara Walker, William Pope.L, and Barbara Kruger, graffiti from around the world, monuments in Mexico City, pop songs (K-Pop and Country music like Blackpink and The Chics, maybe, and also political songs from Trinidad) and elevator music, and folk art from Mexico and Thailand, among others.  We’ll also consider more traditional works like the film adaptation of Mosely’s novel Devil in a Blue Dress, Romare Bearden’s cut-up collage work, and nationally-identified literatures--possibly poetry by Mahmoud Darwish and short stories by JL Borges.  To help us read mass culture, we’ll study theories of the contestation of cultural hegemonies and deviant politics, such as Blanchot on criminality in everyday life, Foucault on public power, Laura Mulvey’s analysis of the male gaze, the Situationists on “the society of the spectacle,” Stuart Hall’s argument for cultural studies, Jameson’s reading of postmodern culture, and Baudrillard on Disneyland.  In-class essays and a final exam.
COM LIT (S24)107  INDGNOUS SOVREIGNTYCARROLL, A.
COM LIT 107: Indigenous Sovereignty
Professor Alicia Carroll


This course examines the early East Asian and European theological origins, political evolution, and present significance of sovereignty, a historically contingent term that has become valued within Native American and Indigenous studies discourses to signify Indigenous Peoples’ “legal and social rights to political, economic, and cultural self-determination” (Joanne Barker, Sovereignty Matters: Locations of Contestation and Possibility in Indigenous Struggles for Self-Determination, p. 1). Students will explore Indigenous sovereignty through engagement with Native American and Indigenous cultural texts that represent and/or perform theories and practices of self-determination and self-government in various precolonial, settler/colonial, and “postcolonial” historical contexts. Course materials include works by Indigenous scholars who develop conceptual frameworks; research methodologies; and modes of critique, analyses, and debate that work toward the decolonization of Indigenous lands/waters/spaces, cultures/lifeways, community structures, governments, educational systems, intellectual traditions, philosophies, and worldviews. Assignments may include works by Anishinaabe, Cherokee, Cree, Creek, Esselen, Kanaka Maoli, Kiowa, Laguna Pueblo, Lakota, Lenape, Maori, Mohawk, Ohlone, Osage, and Pequot scholars, artists, and activists.
COM LIT (S24)140  HIP HOP RELIGIONCARTER, J.
No detailed description available.
COM LIT (S24)150  LIVING IN THE CITYDIMENDBERG, E.
CL 150  Living in the City

Through analysis of texts in translation, this class will consider the modalities of urban experience in Berlin, Moscow, Amsterdam, Paris, Belgrade, Rome, and Tokyo. Writers to be studied include Emile Zola, Boris Pekic, Walter Benjamin, and Yukio Mishima.  Novels by Magda Szabo, Jenny Erpenbeck, Natalya Baranskaya, and Natalia Ginzburg will be investigated as clues about the agency of women in the metropolis during times of political and social transformation. Readings by urban theorists such as Henri Lefebvre and Walter Benjamin will provide an armature for thinking broadly about the modern metropolis.  Assignment structure: Weekly reading questions, take-home midterm, and final essay. Regular attendance and participation in class discussions will be expected.
Instructor: Edward Dimendberg
COM LIT (S24)190W  GLBL INDGENOUS FILMGAMBER, J.
CL 190W

This class engages in central issues of Indigeneity and explores contemporary film and video games, created by Indigenous people from nations including Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Taiwan, Sweden, and the United States (in English or with English subtitles. We will investigate ways that these artists construct narratives of Indigenous community and selfhood, particularly within contemporary colonial national contexts. Among the issues we will focus on are constructions of gender and sexuality and the role of place within these narratives.
COM LIT (S24)199  INDPT STDY COMP LITAMIRAN, E.
No detailed description available.
COM LIT (S24)199  INDPT STDY COMP LITCARROLL, A.
No detailed description available.
COM LIT (S24)199  INDPT STDY COMP LITCOLMENARES GON, D.
No detailed description available.
COM LIT (S24)199  INDPT STDY COMP LITJOHNSON, A.
No detailed description available.
COM LIT (S24)199  INDPT STDY COMP LITMOR, L.
No detailed description available.
COM LIT (S24)199  INDPT STDY COMP LITRAHIMIEH, N.
No detailed description available.
COM LIT (S24)199  INDPT STDY COMP LITSCHWAB, G.
No detailed description available.
COM LIT (S24)199  INDPT STDY COMP LITTERADA, R.
No detailed description available.
COM LIT (S24)199  INDPT STDY COMP LITSTAFF
No detailed description available.